DistroWatch Weekly

A weekly opinion column and a summary of events from the distribution world

DistroWatch Weekly

DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 562, 9 June 2014

Welcome to this year's 23rd issue of DistroWatch Weekly! It has been said that the one constant in this world is change. This week we take a look at projects which are embracing change, be it in the form of new people, new policies or new approaches to package management. We begin with a review of the GoboLinux distribution, a project which takes an unusual approach to file system structure and software management. In our News section this week we discuss the Gentoo Council's views on packaging and configuration. We also hear from Gentoo developer Brian Dolbec and his views on Gentoo and open source software. Last year Ubuntu began raising funds by way of donations and we link to a report on how that donation money is being spent. Fedora chose a new Project Leader, Matthew Miller, last week and we share Miller's initial thoughts on his new position. In our Tips and Tricks section we discuss command line tricks and link to a fun command line resource. As usual, we cover the distribution releases of the past week and look ahead to fun, new releases to come. We wish you all a fantastic week and happy reading!

As you may remember from my review of NixOS, I appreciate projects which attempt to deliver alternative approaches to software management. There are problems inherent in any package management system and it is good to explore alternatives which may make life easier for either the people who package software or the end-users. One distribution which takes an unusual approach to delivering software is GoboLinux. As the project's website states, "GoboLinux is an alternative Linux distribution which redefines the entire file system hierarchy. In GoboLinux you don't need a package database because the file system is the database: each program resides in its own directory."

In essence, GoboLinux organizes software on the system differently than most Linux distributions. Software is stored in a directory hierarchy which divides software by name and by version. This allows users to locate and manage software using directories based on the package's name. New software versions can be installed alongside older versions of packages. Old versions of software we no longer want can be removed simply by deleting the program's directory. This means that, rather than having most of our executable files all collected together in the /usr/bin or /usr/local/bin directory while data files are scattered through /usr/share and configuration files reside in /etc, we might have a directory called /Programs/Firefox/28.0 or /Programs/Firefox/29.0. All of a program's configuration files, data and executables reside in these self-contained directories. On paper, at least, it makes the organization of the file system much cleaner.

The latest release of GoboLinux, version 015, includes some brief release notes and a list of available software packages. There is just one edition of GoboLinux. It is built for the 32-bit x86 architecture (with PAE support) and features the Enlightenment graphical user interface. Prior to trying GoboLinux I recommend reading the distribution's documentation as GoboLinux does a few things differently from most other Linux distributions. The download for GoboLinux is approximately 1.5 GB in size.

Booting from the GoboLinux media brings up a screen with text-based menus. Using these menus we are asked to select our preferred language from a list and choose our keyboard's layout. We are then presented with a text console where we are logged in as the user "gobo". Instructions on the screen tell us how to bring up a graphical user interface and how to launch the system installer. The graphical environment turns out to be the Enlightenment window manager. On the desktop are icons for running the GParted partition manager and the system installer. At the bottom of the screen we find an application menu, task switcher and system tray.

Opening the graphical system installer we are first shown a screen which lets us know we should partition our hard drive prior to going through the installation process. Assuming we have already partitioned our disk the installer asks us which partition we should use for GoboLinux and what file system we would like to use. Our file system options are limited to ext2, ext3 or ext4. We can choose to create a swap file within the GoboLinux partition if we wish. We are next asked whether we would like to perform a Base, Typical or Full installation. The Base set of packages appears to provide a text console interface only and requires 1 GB of hard disk space.

The Typical installation gives us a minimum graphical environment. The Full option installs all available packages from the GoboLinux media onto our hard drive and uses about 4 GB of space. I opted to perform the Full installation. We are next asked whether we want to install the GRUB 2 boot loader and, if so, where. The installer then walks us through choosing a hostname for our computer, selecting our keyboard's layout, selecting our time zone from a list and guarding the root account with a password. We can then add regular user accounts to the system, several accounts if we like. The installer then copies its files to the local drive and, when it is finished, we are asked to reboot the computer.

GoboLinux boots to a text console and presents us with a login prompt. We can get back to the Enlightenment graphical interface if we want by signing into our user account and running the "startx" command. At this point I had a running installation, the distribution seemed to be working okay and I had some desktop application to play with. My next step was to try to figure out how to install security updates and download additional software and that is when things started getting tricky. My first problem was I could not find a package manager in the application menu. Browsing through the website I had trouble finding documentation which related to package management, which struck me as odd since the distribution has a focus on alternative software management. Next I tried to access the user forum, but it was down (at the time of writing). I also tried the GoboLinux wiki and ran into a series of database errors.

Next I considered downloading packages directly from the project's mirrors, but most of the mirrors were off-line. I eventually found a Wikipedia entry which talked about the Compile program and how it is used to download and build third-party software on GoboLinux. I tried running the Compile program on a few packages. Typically Compile would fail to download the source code it needed or it would fail to locate a dependency and exit with a message telling me I should run InstallPackage instead. The InstallPackage program appears to handle pre-built binary software. However, each time I ran InstallPackage it failed to find the software I wanted. I tried running both utilities in an attempt to grab a variety of software including Inkscape, Java, Gnash, a few command-line shells and other desktop programs. The only item I successfully managed to download and install was the tcsh command-line shell, which Compile downloaded and built from source code. All other items I attempted to download failed at some point in the process.

GoboLinux comes with a handful of desktop applications. We are given the Firefox web browser, the Epour bittorrent client, the Pidgin messaging software and the Econnman network manager. The VLC multimedia player is included for us along with the Audacious music player and the Rage video player. GoboLinux ships with multimedia codecs for playing most media formats. Flash is not included by default, though I did find an entry for the Gnash open source Flash player in the distribution's collection of build scripts. The installation of Gnash eventually failed. Digging into the application menu further we find the LibreOffice productivity suite, a PDF document viewer, the Htop process monitor and the Enlightenment File Manager. The distribution ships with the GNU Image Manipulation Program, the Mirage image viewer and the GParted partition manager. In the background GoboLinux runs on the Linux kernel, version 3.14. Typing in a command which is not available locally, but is in the repositories, will bring up instructions for acquiring the package using Compile or InstallPackage. Running either of these commands to install packages usually failed during my trial.

I tried running GoboLinux in two test environments, on a desktop machine and in a VirtualBox virtual environment. In both environments GoboLinux performed well. All of my desktop's hardware was properly detected and utilized, the distribution ran fairly quickly and the Enlightenment desktop was responsive. While sitting at the command line GoboLinux used approximately 32 MB of memory and, when logged into Enlightenment, the distribution required approximately 140 MB of RAM.

Conclusions

When considering GoboLinux I think it is important to divide the conversation into two parts, the design of the file system as a theory and the functionality of the package management tools in practice. Looking at the theory first, the idea of placing software into modular directories to make organization easier has been tried a number of times. The idea is appealing because it makes finding software and organizing the file system easier from a human point of view. This approach feels more tidy and makes directory structures easier to read.

However, to implement these alternative file systems we need to teach the computer to find and use resources and that is where the idea typically starts to break down. How does one tell the computer to find the executable files in the correct spot? Do we hack in symbolic links and, if so, how do we manage multiple versions of files? Do we add additional paths to our list of areas where executable files can be found? In both cases the package manager needs to know how to cleanly remove software we no longer need without orphaning remaining versions. Finally, how do we deal with legacy issues when older (or unpatched) software wants to use standard file system layouts? In a perfect world software would be flexible on the locations of files, but the reality is software often looks for files in standard locations.

What the GoboLinux distribution has done is create a new file system layout that lives alongside the original. The original file system structure is filled with symbolic links to the new, modular locations. Then the standard file system is hidden from the end-user using a kernel module. The standard file system is still there, full of symbolic links, but we cannot see it by default. This means if something goes wrong and we need to access a file in the traditional file system we need to either have a good idea of where everything is located or we need to disable the kernel module which hides directories from us. What I took away from my time with GoboLinux is the developers have put forward an interesting concept, but to do so there are several layers of hacks in place which use (and hide) the traditional file system. Which leaves me wondering if we might be better off with less complexity and stick to the traditional file system layout.

The second aspect of GoboLinux, the practical side of package management, is basically broken. There are two tools I found for working with software, InstallPackage for dealing with pre-built binary files and Compile for building software from source code. The InstallPackage program failed on every bundle I attempted to download. This was especially frustrating when, after trying to run a program that was not yet installed, the system would prompt me to run "InstallPackage package-name". Following the instructions always resulted in the system telling me it could not find or install the package. Using the Compile utility to build software from source code rarely worked either, most packages failed to build due to missing dependencies or broken links to source code. The end result was that I was stuck using just the software which was provided in the installation image as the package management tools were rendered ineffective.

In the end, I appreciate the GoboLinux developers for trying something different. I always like to see someone come along and try to improve software management. I even appreciate trying to shake up the arcane Linux file system. However, GoboLinux, from a practical point of view, simply did not deliver an alternative file system or effective package management. Perhaps, down the line, the software management tools will improve and the collection of available packages will grow. For now, GoboLinux presents some interesting ideas, but not a practical implementation.

* * * * *

Hardware used in this review

My physical test equipment for this review was a desktop HP Pavilon p6 Series with the following specifications:

Each month the Gentoo Monthly Newsletter interviews a member of the project's development team and this month it was Brian Dolbec's turn. In the interview Dolbec discusses his background in Linux, his profession, his involvement in various projects within the Gentoo community and open source software he would like to see developed.

In other Gentoo news, the Gentoo Council recently discussed an interesting issue. When bugs like Heartbleed are discovered it is often found that exploiting the bug relies on the software being configured in a specific way to enable certain features. This raises the question of which features should be enabled by default in distribution packages. Disabling the heartbeat feature in OpenSSL, for example, would have protected the servers where the OpenSSL package was installed and the OpenSSH daemon enabled. The Gentoo Council decided the subject was too broad for a one-size-fits-all policy and encouraged package maintainers to stick to the default configuration provided by upstream projects.

* * * * *

Though the Ubuntu distribution is free to download and use, the project does attempt to generate revenue via various methods. One of the methods Ubuntu uses to raise funds is accepting donations from people downloading installation images from their website. Some people have wondered how this money is spent and Michael Hall, a Canonical employee, addresses this in a blog post. "As part of our commitment to openness and transparency we said that we would publish a report highlighting both the amount of donations made to this category, and how and where that money was being used. Linked below is the first of those reports." The report can be viewed on Google Docs.

* * * * *

In May we reported that Fedora Project Leader Robyn Bergeron was stepping down from her position with the Red Hat sponsored community project. On June 3 eWeek announced a new Fedora Project Leader had been appointed. Matthew Miller is stepping into the leadership position and is aware he has a difficult job ahead. "As the FPL, you've got the responsibility, but no actual authority to tell anyone to do things,' Miller said. 'So you have to find people that have an interest and are aligned with the direction you want to go.'" Long time Fedora fans may recognize Miller's name, he is a regular contributor to Fedora Magazine and was a member of the Fedora Legacy project which extended the life cycle of early Fedora releases. Miller shared more thoughts about his new role in Fedora Magazine saying: "I'm proud to have been part of the Fedora community since the early days. I'm grateful to have been given the opportunity to work on Fedora as my full-time job for the past year and a half. And now, I'm excited to be stepping into a new place within the community as Fedora Project Leader. These are incredible times in computing and in free and open source software, and we have incredible things going on in Fedora to match -- the next years are full of opportunity and growth for the whole project and community, and I'm thrilled to be in a position to help."

Tips and Tricks (by Jesse Smith)

Command line tricks from climagic

It is not easy to convey useful information in 140 characters or less, which is why I usually do not place much interest in Twitter feeds. However, there is one topic for which Twitter is unusually suited and that is sharing cool command line tricks. The Twitter account climagic has been holding my attention recently by publishing useful or interesting command line tricks. Some of the ones I think are useful I would now like to share with you.

The first command line trick I would like to share involves finding a collection of songs and then playing that group of songs using the mplayer multimedia player. Let's say we have a collection of music files and folders under our Music directory. The music files are not organized in any meaningful way, but we know the file names include the name of the artist and song. Using this information we can use the find command to locate all songs by The Pretty Reckless. We use the find command to create a playlist file, called mylist in the example below. We then launch the mplayer command and tell it to play all of the music files in our newly created playlist. Putting all of that together gives us the following command:

Have you ever plugged a USB thumb drive into your computer and wanted to either mount it or copy an image to the drive using the dd command? It is handy to be able to quickly find the name of the newly attached device without wading through the dmesg log entries. There are two commands which will quickly show us the names of all attached storage devices, including hard drives, optical drives and USB devices. Running either lsblk or lsscsi will display a short list of available storage devices and their device names.

The printf command can be very helpful when it comes to displaying information. It can be used in many situations, but one handy feature of printf is its ability to give us the character code for a particular symbol. Knowing the proper character code for a symbol can be useful when writing a program or creating a web page. Here we get the character code for the * symbol:

printf '%d\n' "'*'"42

Here is another example where we get the character code of an accented é:

printf "%d\n", "'é'"233

Sometimes it is useful to be able to use a form of shorthand for things we have already typed. Linux shells have all sorts of short-cuts for accessing previous commands and arguments. One of the more useful command line short-cuts is the symbol for accessing the last parameter of the previous command. The $_ symbol will always give us the last parameter of the last command run. For example, if we run:

mkdir -p /tmp/a/b/c

then the $_ symbol can be thought to hold the value /tmp/a/b/c. In the following example we create a new directory and then move into the new directory in one command:

mkdir -p ~/Web/DWW/20140609 ; cd $_

Earlier I mentioned the dd command can be used to transfer an image from our hard drive to a USB thumb drive. This is something I do on a regular basis in order to test distribution releases. One problem I have with the dd command is that it does not display progress information. When waiting for a large file to transfer it is nice to be able to see regular status updates. The following command shows us the status of all dd jobs in progress:

killall -USR1 dd

We can take this a step further and see updated progress reports every few seconds by using the watch command:

watch killall -USR1 dd

The above command displays status updates every few seconds until we press CTRL-C.

To get more fun command line tricks you can follow climagic on Twitter.

Tango Studio is a Debian-based Linux distribution featuring an extensive collection of free and open-source software for sound, video and graphics editing and creation. A new stable version was released earlier today: "Six months after the release of the first version, we are pleased to announce the release of Tango Studio version 2.2. This new version has been updated to Wheezy 7.5 and it contains some new features and bug fixes, as well as an update of the best open-source applications available for sound creation. Users of 2.1-rc1 do not need to re-install, the distribution can be updated via Synaptic or apt-get. Changes: add quick search filter for Synaptic; add ntpdate to make computer clocks accurate; add information about audio and video files via the properties of Caja; fix to open shell script with Pluma...." Read the full release announcement for a full changelog.

Paweł Pijanowski has announced the release of SparkyLinux 3.4 "LXDE", "E18" and "Razor-qt" editions, a set of Debian-based distributions with a choice of three lightweight desktop interfaces: "SparkyLinux 3.4 'Annagerman' LXDE, Razor-qt and Enlightenment 18 is out. The new ISO images of SparkyLinux 3.4 provide tons of updates, changes and system improvements, such as: Linux kernel 3.14; all packages upgraded from Debian's 'testing' repositories as of 2014-05-31; LXDE 0.5.5; Openbox 3.5.2; Razor-qt 0.5.2; Enlightenment has been updated up to version 18 (0.18.2/0.18.5); support for installation on machines with EFI; systemd is the default init system now; Sparky Center – our system control center for LXDE desktop has been rebuilt, added tabs for every option and upgraded to version 0.2.1...." See the release announcement for more details and screenshots.

Natanael Copa has announced the release of Alpine Linux 3.0.0, a security-oriented distribution designed primarily for servers: "We are pleased to announce Alpine Linux 3.0.0, the first release in the 3.0 stable series. This is the first release with musl libc instead of uClibc and is not ABI compatible with earlier versions, so special care needs to be taken when upgrading. Since v2.7, among the various bug fixes, several packages have been upgraded: Linux kernel based on 3.14.5, LXC 1.0.3, QEMU 2.0.0, Asterisk 12.3.0, OpenSSH 6.6p1, OpenJDK 7, Varnish 4.0.0. Some of the desktop applications that got upgraded and are available for 3.0: X.Org Server 1.15.1, Firefox 29.0.1, Gnumeric 1.12.8, Evince 3.12, VLC 2.1.4, Inkscape 0.48.4, GIMP 2.8.10. A port for ARM has been created, but it is still experimental and not included in release builds." Here is the full release announcement.

Justin Sherrill has announced the release of DragonFly BSD 3.8.0, a new version of the UNIX-like operating system created in 2003 by Matthew Dillon as a fork of FreeBSD 4.8. This will be the last release supporting the i386 architecture. From the release announcement: "DragonFly release 3.8. Big-ticket items: dynamic binaries in the root file system; DragonFly binaries in /bin and /sbin are now dynamic, which makes it possible to use current identification and authentication technologies such as PAM and NSS to manage user accounts; some libraries have been moved to /lib to support this; USB4BSD is now default in DragonFly, USB3 devices are supported, though some network devices may not be recognized; the drm/i915 driver had originally been ported from FreeBSD, an ongoing synchronization work with the version present in the Linux 3.8 branch is now going on."

John Martinson has announced the release of Robolinux 7.5.3, an updated version of the project's Debian-based distribution featuring a pre-configured VirtualBox for running Windows as a "guest" operating system: "Announcing global private internet access for all of your Internet devices. Protect your privacy and say good-bye to the NSA, also stops ISP torrent throttling. Now you can protect your PC, laptop, phone, tablet, TV and gaming console too. In fact anything you own that is connected to the Internet can now be protected with just one VPN account. The Robolinux VPN is fully integrated to a global private Internet access provider and takes less than 30 seconds to set up. We added Lucky Backup. The 64-bit edition has a new kernel from Debian upstream; Robolinux has also released an updates repository so users no longer need to reinstall Robolinux when new versions come out." The announcement is available on the project's SourceForge page.

A new version of Superb Mini Server (SMS), a Slackware-based distribution designed for servers, was released yesterday: "Superb Mini Server version 2.0.7 released (Linux kernel 3.10.41). After almost 8 months we have a new release with LTS 3.10.41 linux kernel, many server upgrades and security fixes, including OpenSSL 1.0.1h. The main reason for the delay, was four hard disk failures. Although I couldn't prepare a release, updates were right on time, regarding security and regular packages updates, so those who track the 'Current' tree will have little to upgrade. For this release we had a dilemma for our web server, to either switch to PHP 5.4 or stay with PHP 5.3. We decided to stay with 5.3 for now, but there is a 'php54' package in extra, built for httpd 2.2.27, if someone wants to upgrade their PHP package, but beware to remove php package first." Read the rest of the release announcement for further details and a full changelog.

Julius Hader has announced the release of LinuxBBQ Cream, a small Debian-based distribution that offers a choice of 76(!) window managers: "LinuxBBQ is proud to announce the immediate availability of 'Cream', an installable live session that features no less than 76 window managers, untouched and vanilla from the developers' sources. Cream is an easy and quick way to test window managers, even those obscure ones that have never been featured in other Linux distributions before. We made sure to create a uniform look and feel, while staying on the light side in resource usage. Cream runs smoothly on any IBM-compatible PC with at least 256 MB of RAM. The live ISO image weighs in at 478 MB, so it can be put on a small USB stick or on CD. As an extra, there are framebuffer, tmux and TTY sessions included, as well as the Enlightenment desktop environment." Here is the brief release announcement.

Wifislax 4.9 has been released. Wifislax is Slackware-based live CD with an extensive collection of tools for performing wireless connection analyses and related security tests, although it can equally serve as a general-purpose desktop Linux distribution with a choice of KDE or Xfce desktops. This is a release that corrects the recent security issues with OpenSSL, as well as a bug in Linux kernel that could cause memory overflow. It includes a patched version 3.13.11 of the Linux kernel and the application set has been synchronised with Slackware's "Current" tree. There have been no changes on the desktop front where KDE remains at version 4.10.5 and Xfce on 4.10.2. Some of the package updates include OpenSSL 1.0.1h, GCC 4.8.3, Hydra 8.0, Crunch 3.6, FFmpeg 2.2.2, Firefox 29.0.1 and Wireshark 1.10.7. Read the rest of the release announcement (in Spanish only, even though the distribution also supports English) for further information and a detailed changelog.

1 • Gobo (by greg on 2014-06-09 10:30:10 GMT from Slovenia)
when i read about gobo i wanteds to give it a try, but then i dug deeper and saw the symbolic links it uses. i am not sure this is the good approach.

so as the review asks "How does one tell the computer to find the executable files in the correct spot?" i don't think the spot itself is the issue here. look at various portable apps projects availabel on Windows. how did they solve the issue? simply oyu put the necessery libraries along with the apps. if some are not availabel then the one frm system is used. and system keeps them in only a few places if not only one (i don't know ho latest wins have this arranged). something similar could be and iMO should be done in Linux. The various portable apps also have a nice updater that will find updates for apps and download them if you request it. each app into it's own folder. if certian dependency is missing use the one form system. then it's on the porgram maintainers that they ship all that is needed along with the bundle.sure it make it bigger, but then again you can easilly install the newer version next to old version or you can even have two verison of same applicaiton...2 • Separate program directories (by cykodrone on 2014-06-09 11:51:14 GMT from Canada)
So does that mean library files are are replicated if many programs use the same library and version?3 • LInux BBQ (by ckyodrone on 2014-06-09 12:22:18 GMT from Canada)
Their website is hilarious, lots of humour. This is a great distro if you have spare time on your hands and you want discover what's bleeding edge in the Debian and DEs world, kinda like the Fedora for Deb-heads, lol. Although, I'm a little nervous about using anything from China, go ahead, call me tinfoil hat paranoid, safe is better than sorry.4 • GOBO (by GreginNC on 2014-06-09 14:06:43 GMT from United States)
While I agree somewhat with your assessment that symbolic links and added complexity may not be prudent in the long run. I have to wonder why after stating that when you checked the software mirrors were offline you then stated that you were unable to install software and even said that "package management was broken" as though that was a systemic flaw rather than something likely caused by unavailable repos.

Give them a break, that project has been dormant for four years and just got a new version out, I would assume it would take a while to get all the repos updated especially if it's a small team working on it.5 • Skip the temporary file (by Sitwon on 2014-06-09 15:03:28 GMT from United States)
If you're using Bash, you can play your ad-hoc playlist without writing a temporary file to disk by using process substitution.
http://tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/process-sub.html

In short, the "latest" or "active" copy of a given library is symlinked to a global directory where it can be discovered and loaded by an application which depends on it.7 • @4 Re: GOBO (by Rev_Don on 2014-06-09 15:47:54 GMT from United States)
You are missing the point of a review. Jesse did the right thing by revealing all of his findings, both good and bad. If you don't tell the readers about a distro's shortcomings you haven't done anyone any favours. Readers want to know what is wrong just as much as what is right, and the distro creators/maintainers need to know that as well so they can fix the problems.

In short, he DID "give them a break". He posted what he found, warts and all.8 • LinuxBBQ (by JWJones on 2014-06-09 16:33:23 GMT from United States)
@3 - Although LinuxBBQ is technically from China (Julius Hader a.k.a. "machinebacon" currently lives and works in China), the distro is an international effort. Fear not! ;)9 • Re: Command line tricks from climagic (by Roland on 2014-06-09 17:09:35 GMT from United States)
The trick with $_ doesn't always work: $ mkdir -p ~/Desktop/"New Music"/"Crest of a Knave" $ cd $_ bash: cd: /home/rolandl/Desktop/New: No such file or directoryDoes bash have a quoting bug?10 • @9 Re: Re: Command line tricks from climagic (by Sitwon on 2014-06-09 18:34:29 GMT from United States)
It's not a quoting bug, it's the normal behavior in Bash.

The argument to mkdir was not [~/Desktop/"New Music"/"Crest of a Knave"]. That's what you typed, but the shell expands and normalizes it before it's passed to mkdir. So the actual argument was [/home/roland/Desktop/New Music/Crest of a Knave] (obviously I'm guessing at your username).

So, just like every other time you dereference a variable in Bash, you should quote the special variable $_ in case it contains whitespace characters (space, tab, carriage return, and newline are all valid characters in a POSIX filename).11 • healthy paranoia (by M.Z. on 2014-06-09 18:50:11 GMT from United States)
@3Given the level of problems caused by things downloaded off the internet it is always good to have some healthy paranoia when dealing with computers. This is true no matter where you are in the world, and there can be blow back in all parts of the world caused by privacy fears. After the leaks of NSA documents many large tech companies in the US began to complain vocally in D.C. about how their international business had been hurt by privacy breeches, and now representatives in the US are doing more to reign in the NSA. Despite all the other things that could be said about that situation the negative blow back did good things for the privacy of people all over the world. So with apologies to well intended & innocent software makers in China, I say don't use anything from there until the locals can lobby the government to get reforms that improve privacy & reduce all forms of hacking.12 • GoBYO? (by Otto B. Reticent on 2014-06-09 19:35:50 GMT from United States)
Start with the Keep-It-Short'n'Simple concept of a simplified file-system structure, and then lard on KDE or Enlightenment? Release when packaging is generally broken? Is this an example of the power of geeks' lemming-urge toward complex-ification, or another I-Told-You-So from GlobalCorp saboteurs or Arch elitists? At best, perhaps it's simply a demo, and you're expected to Go-Build-Your-Own Linux-Nearly-From-Scratch?13 • hmmm.... ? (by Jordan on 2014-06-09 19:48:45 GMT from United States)
Another development release of Elive. Seems like the non-development releases ("distribution release") are experimental at worse and in need of development at best.

Interesting distro. I've had several releases over the years. But does anybody keep Elive as their default distro? It seems like a sort of hula hoop or something to play with but not a keeper.

Like it's any better using something from the "home of the 'free' and the land of the 'brave' "...
15 • Gobo and Nix? (by Reg on 2014-06-09 23:26:44 GMT from Australia)
Gobo sounds like it would benefit from using Nix as a package manager, because of the finer control you gain.16 • China and Russia OS's (by jymm on 2014-06-09 23:54:45 GMT from United States)
ckyodrone - I was a bit paranoid too, But then I tried Point Linux from Russia. Best OS i have used yet. I also tried Start OS from China as it is looks so much like Windows XP, for some friends and family that need to give up XP. Like them both and no longer paranoid.17 • The answer to Life, the Universe and Everything (by Ricardo on 2014-06-10 02:55:12 GMT from Argentina)
$ printf '%d\n' "'*'"42

Is that why 42 is the answer?

Sorry for such an off-topic but I'm currently reading The Hitchicker's Guide to the Galaxy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/42_(number)#The_Hitchhiker.27s_Guide_to_the_Galaxy18 • Made in China (by bacon on 2014-06-10 03:36:33 GMT from Japan)
LinuxBBQ is just as Chinese as most of our the readers here ;) Lean back and relax, there's still Ubuntu from the Isle of Man ;)19 • a little better anyway (by M.Z. on 2014-06-10 05:14:12 GMT from United States)
@14I'd point out that the last time someone claimed an open project had a back door inserted on behalf of US intelligence agencies that version of BSD got looked over extensively & there was nothing but a few minor & unintentional bugs. In contrast China has both a culture of corruption & a strong proclivity to engage in various forms of electronic espionage, so by any reasonable measure I'd argue that yes the risks are higher with Chinese software. There are lots of problems with overreach in US intelligence circles, but all the evidence indicates that it hasn't affected any open source projects.20 • @13 (by GreginNC on 2014-06-10 11:27:44 GMT from United States)
I've been a PcLinux user my self since 2007 so we're in agreement there.

As for Elive being something to play with but not a keeper I would probably disagree. I switched to Elive from PcLinux when PcLinux went to KDE4 and ran it happily for a couple years until it got too outdated to continue. I now use Pclinux as my anchor system mainly because I have a certain loyalty toward it and because they are about the only distro to still use GRUB legacy while my primary day to day system is Slackware.

I havent had any interest in the Elive betas as they don't include an installer so I can't comment on their current effort, but if their past efforts are any indication I'll be looking forward to getting an ISO when they release a stable version.21 • printf Hitchhiker's Guide (by Jesse on 2014-06-10 13:19:01 GMT from Canada)
@17:Yes, the printf statement which translates * into 42 was inspired by Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The climagic feed posted several command line tricks in which the answer worked out to be 42, in honour of Douglas Adams' work. I think it is especially suited since * is the symbol for matching everything and anything.22 • Mint 17 and Wine (by fernbap on 2014-06-10 17:22:04 GMT from Portugal)
Recently, i posted here that Ubuntu 14.04, and therefore Mint 17 as well, had issues with wine, by trying 2 old games that i use to test wine on any distro i try.I was not the only one, and so Mint forum didn't take long to come up with a solution, which is installing the ia32-libs metapackage, which installs all 32 libs needed by wine to run 32 bit windows applications,All the issues disappeared completely, and so i'm pleased to report that Mint 17 Mate has been flawless since that operation.Oddly enough, couldn't find that package in Ubuntu's repos, and so the Xubuntu that i installed with mate+compiz+emerald still has a few issues, although one was fixed by an update.23 • Manjaro Xfce (by Bill Donnelly on 2014-06-10 17:27:13 GMT from Canada)
Installed and liked this (Manjaro Xfce) distro. I have Windows 7, Debian 7.5 Xfce and Fedora 20 Xfce on my hard drive. To me, the new Manjaro distro is so much the same as the other two Xfce distros and offers no advantage except for the gnome 2; Mate like desktop. Pretty well work with Debian on my older HP core2 desktop computer and use Fedora to keep up to date on new and updated software. Linux certainly offers users lots of choices and is truly a good alternative to Windows.24 • RE: 22 Wine libraries (by MDboy on 2014-06-10 20:39:46 GMT from United States)
"installing the ia32-libs metapackage, which installs all 32 libs needed by wine to run 32 bit windows applications."Would you mind telling me the name of the metapackage? I don't see it.25 • Elive (@greginnc) (by Jordan on 2014-06-11 00:06:17 GMT from United States)
Thanks for that. I guess there are some out there like yourself. I just don't get it (as compared to so many solid distros out there).

Seems experimental to me, as mentioned.

Texstar turned me around about linux altogether, when I was struggling with this and that distro back a while (long while).

Mentioned Extix because I had to put something quick and easily done on a thumb drive when my hard drive fried. Of course, on Extix's home page it's referred to as "experimental." *blush* :D26 • Sorry to interrupt the regularly scheduled programming (by :wq on 2014-06-11 00:13:47 GMT from United States)
This comment will probably be deleted, but can we drop the geopolitical xenophobia (this is probably not the best term for it, but it's what I'm going with) before it spirals out of control into the usual back and forth of acrimony and broad, sweeping indictments? I have yet to see a nation that can point a finger with a clear conscience. I'm not questioning the earnestness of the usual suspicions in these matters, I just don't think it will lead to anything productive or positive. If code is open source, it should be available to be audited, so please provide proof. And if it's mystery meat (i.e. closed source), other nations may be the least of your problems.

I do not mean this offensively to anyone, and I hope it isn't taken that way.27 • Re: 23 (by Brad on 2014-06-11 00:18:06 GMT from United States)
I've changed distros more times than I can count. But in my 7 complete years using linux, starting with pclinuxos/ubuntu/mint/fedora/chakra/sabayon/arch/manjaro/etc.. I believe I can sum it all up this way:

Pclinuxos is Mandriva done right, Mint is ubuntu done right, Sabayon is Gentoo done right, and Manjaro is arch done right.. (right doesn't mean perfect, or right doesn't mean conform to the original's philosophy) but right means, ease of use, compatibility, etc. I mean the days of only geeks and those willing to learn by trial and error are over in my opinion.

It's nice that the distro just "works" not many end users/desktop users care about configuration files, streamlining an install, etc..

and those distros just work.. in regards to #23, I would say Debian xfce is rock solid as any debian pure distro would be, Fedora is a mix of leading edge and testing, and manjaro is arch which is bleeding edge, but manjaro is bout 7-14 days behind Arch in many cases.. so it's Leading Edge!

All about choice right? I say use whatever works for you, you can figure out, install or willing to learn.

Thats my .02 now I'm broke!28 • wine libraries (by fernbap on 2014-06-11 00:18:17 GMT from Portugal)
The packages is in the mint repos. It doesn't exist on the ubuntu repos. I hunted for all the 32 libs there, but didn't manage to fix all the issues under Ubuntu 14.04.The issue is that installing wine on 64 bit systems doesn't grab as dependencies all the libs that wine needs to run windows 32 bit applications. I'm not saying it is wine's fault, but it is something that the distro maintainers should take in mind.A hint i got is that it has to do with the interface between wine and opengl.29 • a little off (by M.Z. on 2014-06-11 04:24:01 GMT from United States)
@26Of course all nations have done wrong, that isn't really the point & neither is xenophobia. I'd also agree that open source is generally more trust worthy, but like most users I can't conduct an audit of code & I don't know much about finding information on any such audits, so that doesn't help a lot either. One thing I do know is that local pressure is generally needed to generate reform, and such pressure can be generated by opting out of using something.

The distro that started the discussion may not be particularly relevant in this case, but in general public reaction to bad policy can generate reform. If China wants to have a serious software industry then they need to stop their endless cyber attacks or no one will trust their local software companies. These local companies need to push for and end to the current hacking policies in China if they want to expand to other markets; however, that might be difficult given the nature of the government in China. There are lots of problems in China, and it is a good thing to put pressure for reform on the government of China or those that can lobby for reform. I'm also boycotting any distro with the word Ubuntu in the name on account of the privacy policies of that distro, & I think people being vocal about those privacy issues is actually working. Things can get better eventually if you speak out & call people on their bad decisions.30 • @ RE:GOBO (by GreginNC on 2014-06-11 06:51:07 GMT from United States)
My post wasn't meant to be critical of Jesse, rather one thing struck me and I commented on it. You seemed to have missed my point entirely though.

As an example say he did a review of Debian and said he tried to to install something while their repo was down, then concluded that the Deb package management tools were broken because installation failed.

I wouldn't want to read a toadying review and want to be truthfully informed of what the reviewer finds good AND bad. But my only point was that saying package management in GOBO was "broken", under the circumstances, didn't seem an accurate assessment. It may very well be broken but how could you really tell with the repos down?31 • @29 (by :wq on 2014-06-11 07:27:50 GMT from United States)
Would you agree with advice such as "source and pick commodity hardware that is manufactured outside of the U.S., possibly by vendord who are not based there" and "for your hosting or your bandwidth choose a provider that is located in France, Europe or any country that does not snoop and collect your data as it passes on the network"? This was one semi-notable Linux company's reaction to "United States governmental agencies collecting and monitoring data across the Internet", although a cynic could suggest that this advice was more a business calculation than a statement driven by idealistic purity.

"If China wants to have a serious software industry then they need to stop their endless cyber attacks or no one will trust their local software companies. These local companies need to push for and end to the current hacking policies in China if they want to expand to other markets; however, that might be difficult given the nature of the government in China." People can and have made similar statements about a number of other nations, including the United States. I'm not seeking to establish an equivalency of (mis)deed between whatever unsavory goings-on happen in the PRC, whatever unsavory goings-on happen in the US, and whatever unsavory goings-on happen elsewhere, but I am questioning the subjective measure by which distributions and other software offerings are eschewed due to their country of origin. As I would people, I would prefer to take distros (and software in general) on a case by case basis, and judge them on their individual merits (or lack thereof) rather than by their countries of origin (any language barriers which prove insurmountable for me aside). Many of them are multinational efforts anyway, regardless of where they originated. And all use technological underpinnings that exist due to the contributions of people around the world. I'm not trying to stop anyone from avoiding distributions from certain countries, I just wonder if in doing so they might not be painting with too broad a brush.

I hope I did not offend you or anyone else. As I said, it was not my intent. I apologize if this has pushed this week's discussion too much off course (I had actually hoped for the opposite), and I'll understand if this post is deleted. I'll leave this particular issue to rest here, and I look forward to reading comments about other items covered in this week's DistroWatch Weekly.32 • Re: China xenophobia (by cykodrone on 2014-06-11 12:37:32 GMT from Canada)
Being wary of individuals caught doing unscrupulous things does not make one xenophobic, unfortunately China is somewhat schizophrenic politically (communist capitalism?!) and very corrupt. It's not just the software, when I heard they have 'government' offices inside private company buildings and they write snoopware in to the firmware of hardware (wow, that was a mouthful, lol), I became wary, it just so happens to be taking place in another country, no race card involved at all, I would feel the same way if it was here, for example, I have totally rejected any 'free' services from that huge search engine company because they love to track, data mine and sell your information, I even block their bots in my browser. I'm not fond of drones either, hence my nick. The future is here, we either deal with it or get stepped on.33 • Nation-biased distros @29, 31, 26, 19, 18, 14, 3 ... (by gregzeng on 2014-06-11 14:09:25 GMT from Hong Kong)
Here in Australia, our biggest cyber-threats seem to come from the ex-Russian colonies, on the dollar-fraud scams. Luckily it seems, that USA etc does not get these cyber threats?In military terms, most of the known-to-the-public events are because of the hollywood-type publicity machines. So of course, the victims of these publicity machines then guess it must be aliens, etc. What surprises me is that distros that emerge from any of the three national enemy nations of the USA can be launched in Distrowatch without comment. Even Nigeria, one of the biggest cyber-scam nations on the planet, seems not to be mentioned. Methinks the cyber-critics here really love all foods, except Chinese food. Its a cyberthreat to each and every family!34 • @22, etc. ia32-libs (by AliasMarlowe on 2014-06-11 14:21:48 GMT from Finland)
Xubuntu does not have ia32-libs, since it has multiarch instead. I don't know about wine (don't use it), but had a headache trying to install Adobe Aftershot Pro 1.2.0.7, which I had in a 64-bit deb package, on one of our 64-bit Xubuntu systems. It installed flawlessly once I used the 32-bit version of the deb instead, as it's really just a 32-bit package with the ia32-libs libraries to assist in running it on 64-bit linux system.35 • Yes, they can do it elsewhere too (by M.Z. on 2014-06-11 19:34:40 GMT from United States)
@31I'd say pressure on the big US tech companies has also been a good thing, because they have a strong voice inside the US & when they get mad over spying more happens than when I get mad. I'd also say that getting US based tech companies riled up over some loss of business has been good not just in general, but its been good for me on a personal level in terms of my freedom & privacy. One could certainly debate the tone & tactics on an individual basis, but I'd like to thank the people that have helped to encourage the US government to reign in US intelligence agencies by pressuring big US companies. I don't have to like the actions of all the groups putting pressure on US tech companies, but they have still done me a favor. I take a similar attitude toward China & hope for reform there.

@33I did a search & didn't even find any distros from Nigeria on the Distrowatch website, so distros from there are likely to be very untrustworthy indeed. In other words: No I will not download a Nigerian distro no matter how much the local prince begs me ;)36 • @32 (by :wq on 2014-06-11 20:31:32 GMT from United States)
I said I was finished with this particular line of commentary, and yet here I am scratching the itch. I really would like to see the discussion move on to other topical matters, so if I don't respond to any follow-ups, that is why.

At the time, I said that "geopolitical xenophobia" was probably not the best term, and I had a gut feeling that if there was going to be one particular thing in my original post that jumped out at people, that would be it; I went with it as "xenophobia can manifest itself in many ways involving the relations and perceptions of an ingroup towards an outgroup, including . . . suspicion of its activities". I tacked on "geopolitical" to try to modify the concept to what I was trying to convey. Clearly poor terminology on my part.

"Being wary of individuals caught doing unscrupulous things..." What have any of the distributions listed @ http://distrowatch.com/search.php?origin=China&status=Active done that is demonstrably wrong in a way that suggests they are caught up in unscrupulous behavior? If avoiding these distributions isn't due to inherent wrongdoings on their part, and is instead meant to bring roundabout pressure to bear against the CPC, organized crime, etc, I don't think there is a snowball's chance in the Sahara of that happening. I think the only ones which will be affected by people not using these distros are the actual distro projects. I also don't think using these distros is a political endorsement or serves as a significant enabler of the nation of their origin. To stress, I'm not saying don't keep your guard up or don't behold software with a critical eye, and I also acknowledge that there are indeed cybercrime hotspots in the world (http://globalsecuritymap.com/), but there should be allowances made for software projects that act in good faith, IMO.37 • Linux BBQ Cream (by Paul M on 2014-06-12 04:17:50 GMT from United States)
A distro that has 76 window managers to choose from?!?! When I first saw that, I started laughing.... and then, I thought... Well, I'm going to DL the distro just to check out some WM's I've never seen or tried! What a cool idea!!38 • Ubuntu blues (by Stitch on 2014-06-12 17:19:21 GMT from United Kingdom)
I don't use Ubuntu at home but we do use it at work - am I the only one to notice that the quality of the 14.04 LTS is very low? We've had several showstopper bugs and so far they are just closing all of our bug reports.We've had better success with Alpha releases in the past - what's going on there?39 • Ubuntu blues (by fernbap on 2014-06-12 18:50:04 GMT from Portugal)
As usual, the Ubuntu policy of "releasing when not ready" kicks in.However, i wouldn't rule Ubuntu out. Typically, Ubuntu LTS becomes a very solid, very reliable platform, about 2 months after its release.I'm using Mint 17, seriously contemplating the decision to replace my Mint 13 LTS as my working environment, and since its release, i get updates on a daily basis, most of them from the Ubuntu base, with the added benefit of having the Mint overlay to sort things out wherever Ubuntu is still strugling (the ia32-libs metapackage, for instance).Don't worry too much at this early stage. Ubuntu eventually wiil get there.40 • Window managers (by Rumpleforskin on 2014-06-12 18:53:29 GMT from United States)
76?

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/window_manager41 • Window managers (by Jeff on 2014-06-12 22:26:16 GMT from United States)
I am not involved with this site/page and do not claim it to be complete or totally accurate, but you may find it useful, as I have:

The Comprehensive List of Window Managers for Unix

http://www.gilesorr.com/wm/table.html42 • @38 - LTS Point Releases (by Woodstock69 on 2014-06-12 22:52:10 GMT from Papua New Guinea)
As the dev team recommends themselves - don't upgrade your LTS until the first point release: xx.04.1. I too will upgrade when the Trusty 14.04.1 release ships as I use Digikam and v4 is not compiled for 12.04 (yet?).

Yes, I tried to compile it for 12.04 and do my bit for the community, but ran into dep hell and gave up after 72 hours of obscure errors I haven't learnt to interpret yet. As I don't have an internet connection at home, doing research and downloading is a pain (from work). (Yes, the 3+ series works fine for me).

If only Digikam could follow LibreOffice and VirtualBox's lead and make their install generic. And yes, I know the reasons they don't, and yes, it still sucks for my workflow.because I'm addicted to the latest and greatest features I hardly use. ;-)

One day I'll put some effort into learning how to compile complex source, but for now I'm busy learning Python (2.7).... And no. I don't need to learn 3+ yet......
43 • @42, @39, @38 Ubuntu quality (by AliasMarlowe on 2014-06-13 18:00:22 GMT from Finland)
Yep, even normally solid packages like mplayer are buggy in the latest LTS release. Check https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/mplayer/+bug/1218510, which was noticed in Saucy, and still exists in Trusty. It would not even start on my test Xubuntu system until I applied the "fix" mentioned there.My other Xubuntu systems are going to wait until 14.04.1 before upgrading from 12.0444 • Updates (by Ron on 2014-06-13 21:09:37 GMT from United States)
Just wondering here. After several years of using Xubuntu, currently using 12.04 LTS, I get software update messages and I update just about every day. This got me thinking, are there really that many security holes out there. I mean, every day it seems, in the 'Security Vulnerabilities' section, not just face-lifting. Anyone out there know that is going on???45 • updates for bugs & security (by M.Z. on 2014-06-14 06:17:34 GMT from United States)
@44Even a good programmer usually has a error every so often, & that adds up on big complex programs, so yes there have to be a lot of bugs out there. The makers of software are only human after all. I think the only programs that ship without bugs are either very tiny, or very old & static with regard to everything but bug fixes, & even then there are still occasional problems. As a general rule all software is expected to ship with bugs, be they generic errors or security vulnerabilities. In fact one of the things that helped drive me toward open source stuff was a peculiar attitude I could see in a certain OS makers web browser. Just look at the little old security holes pile up in IE:

They do seem to stop the big bugs and may even be getting better at the little ones, but as big a company as MS is it seems bizarre that they have never patched as thoroughly as the folks at Mozzilla. This was true even when Firefox was a tiny player in the browser market. I'll take frequent updates on Linux over that any day; however, you can easily go a week or two without updating if you want, & this is even true on some rolling systems like PCLinuxOS.46 • Ubuntu Studio 14.04 (by imnotrich on 2014-06-15 15:44:59 GMT from United States)
Seeking relief from the constant battles with Pulse Audio not working properly in Ubuntu Studio 13.10, and tired of the constant pestering of upgrade notices I finally upgraded to 14.04.

Silly me. It totally broke sound, now I had none but even more annoying after the upgrade bfgminer could not see any of my usb devices nor my cpu's and gpu's.

So even sillier me I went through the hassle of a complete fresh install. Much to my dismay I find no support for bitcoins and mining built in to 14.04. Had to get Armory, bitcoin-d and bfgminer elsewhere, and still bfgminer hardware scans detect nothing.

After a full day of tinkering I got sound working for most everything except Skype and a high end usb microphone/mixer set I use for recording stuff, Pulse only reluctantly recognizes usb hardware and is hardly consistent at that.

Plus still no functional bitcoin mining capability and Armory refuses to load the blockchain.

Now it would be nice if Ubuntu 14.04 supported recent vintage hardware/software that it's immediately previous OS release did, but I'm even more annoyed with Pulse. Over the years I have tried probably 15 different distros on different hardware since Pulse was released. Nobody can get it right "out of the box."

One more rant? I know Skype for Linux is now owned by Microsoft but c'mon Redmond grow up and act like adults. Wouldn't hurt you to remove the linux/pulse incompatibility feature you build in to Skype, hoping to push customers back to (puke) Windows 8.47 • Lemmings rush off the shore (by Somewhat Reticent on 2014-06-16 03:52:42 GMT from United States)
... and geeks rush to the latest version.

Even the developers recommend waiting until At Least the First "point-release" - the First Milestone against the risen tide of New Bugs.